136 Miles Per Gallon

There was an article the other day on the excellent blog Earth2Tech about a man who has documented his results with his Prius, which he had modified to be able to be plugged in (to a standard electrical outlet). According to the article, the man is now getting 136.45 miles/gallon, or 1,307 miles on a single tank of gas, much better than the very good 60 miles/gallon the Prius normally gets.

My initial reaction was, wow, I need to trade in my car, get a Prius, and get this mod. Then I started clicking around on the Hybrid Plus site (the guys that did the modification to the Prius). It turns out it isn’t so cheap. In fact, it’s pretty expensive, costing up to $32,500, which is more than the car itself. Too bad, because I could live with only going to the gas pump once a month.

Even if this was affordable, I wonder how much it would cost to charge the car every night? According to their site it should only cost around $25 extra a month for electricity. If true, that’s not bad at all.

Anyhow, it’s neat technology that’s just way too expensive for the average consumer. It was also announced last week that Toyota is testing a plug-in hybrid in Japan. Hopefully it will make it’s way into production in the United States and will be a little more affordable when mass produced.

If you want more information, I suggest checking out Hybrid Plus’s FAQ site, it’s a pretty comprehensive site with answers to many of the questions I had.